Such Good Friends

Synopsis

Julie Messinger has it made. She is a New York housewife whose husband, Richard, is an editor for a prominent photography magazine. They have a small circle of friends, including well-meaning, but inept Dr. Timothy Spector, photographer Cal Whiting and Cal's live-in girlfriend Miranda. Julie's mother spends her days getting pedicures and manicures, applying make-up and fake eye-lashes and buying expensive clothes, all the while criticizing her daughter for her looks and behavior. When Richard goes into the hospital for a minor mole-removal surgery, Julie gets more than she bargained for. Richard suffers from complications and goes into a coma, supposedly caused by a rare surgical factor, and she gathers friends and family together, culminating in a hilarious "quasi-cocktail-party" scene in the blood donation center of the hospital. While dealing with red tape, hospital bureaucracy and clueless doctors, Julie discovers her husband's "little black book," which contains the names of her ...

Julie Messinger has it made. She is a New York housewife whose husband, Richard, is an editor for a prominent photography magazine. They have a small circle of friends, including well-meaning, but inept Dr. Timothy Spector, photographer Cal Whiting and Cal's live-in girlfriend Miranda. Julie's mother spends her days getting pedicures and manicures, applying make-up and fake eye-lashes and buying expensive clothes, all the while criticizing her daughter for her looks and behavior. When Richard goes into the hospital for a minor mole-removal surgery, Julie gets more than she bargained for. Richard suffers from complications and goes into a coma, supposedly caused by a rare surgical factor, and she gathers friends and family together, culminating in a hilarious "quasi-cocktail-party" scene in the blood donation center of the hospital. While dealing with red tape, hospital bureaucracy and clueless doctors, Julie discovers her husband's "little black book," which contains the names of her ...

Tech specs

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by JasparLamarCrabb 4 / 10

Such an OK movie

Not great, but certainly among the best of director Otto Preminger's
later films, SUCH GOOD FRIENDS benefits greatly from a clever
screenplay written by Elaine May. Dyan Cannon checks husband Laurence
Luckinbill into the hospital to have a mole removed and before he's
"released," she finds out way too much about his extramarital
dalliances --- what she finds out isn't pleasant. Preminger, whose
films usually feature women without virtues, gives Cannon the rare
opportunity to carry a film on her own and she's quite possibly
perfect! She slowly realizes that her husband is rotten to the core.
She's also supplied with a lot of bitchy one-liners by May. The
supporting cast is top flight: Nina Foch, Ken Howard, James Coco and
Jennifer O'Neill. Also, if you've ever wanted to see Burgess Meredith
in the buff, here's your chance.

Reviewed by kremer5 10 / 10

SUCH GOOD FRIENDS more deserving of Best Film of 1971

WARNING: Just a potential spoiler.

Granted, seeing Gene Hackman, as hard-boiled New York cop Popeye Doyle,
speeding doggedly through the West Side of New York City in a comandeered
vehicle, chasing a subway holding the man who just attempted to
assassinate
him, is still electrifying. There has been no other chase scene quite
like
it. Yes, there is a definite style in William Friedkin's now classic
cat-and-mouse police-badge drama, but this does not necessarily mean that
The French Connection is completely removed from the characteristic
cool-cops-on-the-take actioneers so prevalent in the seventies. Also
granted, it is no extraordinary wonder why the Academy named the film as
the
Best Picture of 1971, but there were indeed far more deserving films, some
of which went unjustly neglected by the naked golden-boy Oscar. That same
year, there were films which, unlike any other cinematic year, went
unrecognized: Ivan Passer's narcotics drama BORN TO WIN, John
Schlesinger's
crisp, complex and very British love triangle SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, Jerry
Schatzberg's shattering portrait of heroin addiction THE PANIC IN NEEDLE
PARK, Paul Newman's adaptation of Ken Kesey's SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION and
Otto Preminger's exceptional, hilarious satire SUCH GOOD FRIENDS, based on
the bestselling novel by Lois Gould and adapted with panache and acidic
wit
by Elaine May (under the pen name Esther Dale).
Shortly before the release of Such Good Friends, the New York Times
critics, following a special advance screening, declared that this picture
had one-of-a-kind virtuoso style and strong direction, but would offend
quite a few people. No doubt, this statement was accurate. Integrating
absurdist images and surrealistic scenes, it is most likely the only film
in
which you will catch a very pompous Burgess Meredith dancing half-naked,
with only loin-cloth and rose, at a high-brow urban terrace party. It is
the only film where you will likely see Dyan Cannon shamelessly throwing
herself at an obese and greatly embarassed family physician, played with
great skill by James Coco. It is the only film you will likely see in
which
a congregation preparing to donate blood to their friend nearly turn the
event into a full-scale cocktail party. All this thrown into one motion
picture makes for a sharp, lively microcosm of the mediocrities of wedlock
and, ultimately, an unforgettable portrayal of the self-gratifying,
solipsistic American fast-track life-all thanks to the always masterful
direction of the notoriously tempestuous Otto Preminger.
Beginning with the now-famous title treatment by the legendary Saul
Bass,
we meet Julie Messinger as she is deciding on what to wear to a party in
honor of her artist husband Richard. The opening scene is quaintly
voyeuristic, as the audience spies on her in her own little world,
accented
with her clad in brassiere and stockings. She bickers with her maid,
makes
peace between her two young children in the midst of an argument and tries
her best to ignore her painfully conceited mother. Taking a sexy fish-net
top out of its box and putting it on without a brassiere, she stares
proudly
at herself in the mirror and says `Take a good look at me. This is what I
am. Do you still want me for your wife?' This is our heroine, the
complete
antithesis of Ms. Cannon's portrayal of Alice in Bob & Carol & Ted &
Alice.
Julie is a woman who is untamed and sexually ferocious in isolated
moments,
but one who immediately closes up in the presence of her husband and
`friends,' simply reacting to others solely because of her insecurity.
She
shakes her head politely and says things like `That's wonderful,' a
complementary trait to her complicated emotional façade and a checkered
past. This is a woman with a crippling disability, if not debilitating-a
character stunningly portrayed by the always gorgeous Dyan
Cannon.
We meet the Cannon character's husband Richard, is a fervently arrogant
and chauvanistic heel, apathetic to his wife's and his children's needs.
He
makes snide comments about things like the `Third World Film Festival' and
refuses the potential comfort from his wife to satisfy his fixed neuroses
prior to a simple mole-removal operation. He buys pet hampsters for his
sons, stating cynically `I didn't grow soft. I just want to make sure
that
if I die, I will generate enough guilt in my children to drive them into
analysis.' It is not at all true that he is a character totally devoid of
feeling or Chekhovian balance, but it is essential to the film's structure
that he be the vessel by which Julie's emotional façade is gradually
deconstructed to reveal a startlingly free woman, ready to shed
superficial
friendships and a contradictory membership to a seemingly rich image of a
rich society of people.
The film's only rival in achieving the particular intention of
demystifying a rich society's stance on outward appearance, or moral if
you
will, was to come the following year with Luis Buñuel's biting French-made
satire THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE. When the film ended, as
with
most of Preminger's works, it left me breathless by the time of the final
fade-out. Indeed, the film could have definitely evolved into trite
melodrama reminiscent of Harold Robbins, but Dyan Cannon's impeccable
performance as a feeling woman wanting to break free of an emotional
strait-jacket and Preminger's handling of an overwhelmingly challenging
script are stunning-so stunning that I am shocked and dismayed that Oscar
totally ignored the performance and the film itself. Cannon's performance
exhibits great pathos, ranging from tender to amusing to bitter to
self-pitying to insecure. I will give you an example of this versatility:
the scene where the grand Ms. Cannon puts down `good friend' Jennifer
O'Neill, not with malice but, as a fellow IMDB critic said, like a true
lady.or the scene where, for once in her life, she responds to the egotism
of her mother (Nina Foch), and lets her have it with a nice, easy
intensity.

To end this analysis/rationale of this film's merit, I acknowledge the
likes
of critics like The Village Voice's Andrew Sarris and the New York Times'
Vincent Canby. They called the film `a breath of fresh air' and
`superior,
one of the year's ten best.' Too bad the film, like so many other
Preminger
works (BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, SKIDOO, TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON
just to name a few), has continued to go unreleased onto video and unshown
anywhere.and finally to the people who could establish it as a cult
classic.
Besides a few scattered showings on eighties television, it has
disappeared
from everyone's memory. Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad.

Reviewed by JasparLamarCrabb 4 / 10

Great satire of the New York way of life

Not great, but certainly among the best of director Otto Preminger's
later films, SUCH GOOD FRIENDS benefits greatly from a clever
screenplay written by Elaine May. Dyan Cannon checks husband Laurence
Luckinbill into the hospital to have a mole removed and before he's
"released," she finds out way too much about his extramarital
dalliances --- what she finds out isn't pleasant. Preminger, whose
films usually feature women without virtues, gives Cannon the rare
opportunity to carry a film on her own and she's quite possibly
perfect! She slowly realizes that her husband is rotten to the core.
She's also supplied with a lot of bitchy one-liners by May. The
supporting cast is top flight: Nina Foch, Ken Howard, James Coco and
Jennifer O'Neill. Also, if you've ever wanted to see Burgess Meredith
in the buff, here's your chance.